Good urban governance and city resilience: An afrocentric approach to sustainable development

Good urban governance is a multidimensional concept that focuses on the improvement of the quality of living conditions of local citizens, especially those of marginalised and disadvantaged communities. Cities face various adversities and challenges, such as unsustainable use of natural resources, lack of housing and infrastructure, the prevalence of poverty, rapid urbanisation, crime, disasters and effects of climate change. City resilience is an inclusive process that refers to a city's ability to sustainably manage unexpected and expected risk-related events. In addition, it includes a city's capacity to adapt to future challenges from a strategic and spatial perspective. This paper aims to analyze the nature of sustainable development in general. More specifically, it sets out to analyze the importance of urban governance in Africa and the interrelationship of good urban governance and city resilience. The purpose is to provide a theoretical underpinning and a practical orientation for the role that urban governance could play in sustainable development. The methodology is based on a document analysis by way of an intensive literature study. The qualitative description of the findings focused on the themes that emerged from the research and the manner in which they were conceptualised. It was established that while African countries have experienced certain successes, there have been many challenges as far as 'good' and 'sustainable' urban governance is concerned. Results indicated that the notion of 'good urban governance' is a prerequisite for African countries to design and execute sustainable development initiatives successfully.